Education: The Student as President

As one antidote to campus disorder, dozens of U.S. colleges have lately
invited students to share the chores of administration. Key faculty
committees boast voting student members; boards of trustees bloom with
recent graduates. Now the trustees of New Hampshire's Franconia College
have gone a step farther. They have just named a graduate student as
the school's new president. He is Leon Botsteinage 23.

The move was entirely appropriate for Franconia, a tiny (enrollment:
250) experimental college that has given its students a major voice in
charting their studies ever since it opened in...